RSC NewsFeed

I’ve been using Microsoft Office 2007 for over two years now and I still struggle to find things in the new menu bar also known as the ‘ribbon’. A recent minor breakthrough was the realisation that not all of the commands are actually displayed (if you click on the round home button, top-left, select ‘Word Options’, then ‘Customize’, you can list all the hidden commands by changing the ‘Choose commands from’ option to ‘Commands Not in the Ribbon’. I’m sure there are many commands in this list that you don’t recognise, equally the features of Microsoft Office are so vast that I’m sure you are not aware of some of the simple things you can do to improve your productivity. If you don’t have the time to attend your institutions MS Office training (if they still provide such a thing), you might want to try Microsoft Office Labs Ribbon Hero.

Ribbon Hero is a free Office add-on which allows you to learn about Word PowerPoint and Excel into more bite-sized chunks. By taking ‘challenges’ you can learn about increasing your Office productivity, and to motivate you towards Office mastery you are awarded points (with the option of comparing how you are getting on by uploading to a leaderboard on Facebook.  The video below shows you how to ‘play the game’:

Click here to download Ribbon Hero

Classtools offers a series of templates which allow you to ‘create free educational games, activities and diagrams’ which can then be hosted on your website, blog or intranet.  Click here to get started.

It’s difficult to find words to better those on the site itself which describe exactly what they’re up to….

Instead of ‘force-feeding’ dry maths content with anachronistic textbooks, Mangahigh intrigues and entices students with unique, curriculum-compliant maths casual games, while building competence with our complementary maths eLearning system, Prodigi^®. Prodigi^® and the maths games work in symphony to introduce mathematical concepts as part of game-play and promote automaticity through repetition. Enthusiastic students find new challenges at Mangahigh, and hone aptitudes that will lead them to exam excellence and success in higher education and beyond… Click here to judge for yourself.

In May 2008, SQA had funding approved to support the continuing development of National Certificates and NPAs with a focus on the use of technology – the TranSETT Project (www.sqa.org.uk/europe). The funding was provided by European Structural Funds, Scottish Government and SQA. The first year of TranSETT has seen SQA create e-assessments and, in partnership with Scotland’s Colleges, web-based support materials for a range of subject areas. These resources will start to become available for centres to use from August 2009 , supported by a series of dissemination and training events.

In March 2009, SQA was approved for an additional £1.2m of European funding to continue and expand the development of innovative resources supporting a wider range of National Certificates and NPAs. This additional funding has been secured until 2011 and will allow SQA, with its partners, to continue this exciting development. Not only will we be developing more e-assessment and web-based learning materials but would also like to respond to the increasing use of other internet-based technologies to support learning, such as games-based assessment and e-portfolios.

Interested parties now have an opportunity to get involved in this development by completing our tender questionnaire.

Click here to access the pre-qualification questionnaire.

Closing date for submission is 6 July 2009.

A user guide to the Public Contracts portal is available to download below:

Click here to download the Public Contracts portal user guide

Further information is also available in the help section of the website, or by contacting the SQA procurement team and quoting reference SQA1446. (E-mail: procurement@sqa.org.uk)

It’s worth taking the 7:09 minutes to have a look at this amazing technology which might just be the shape of the future. ‘Siftables’ are small intelligent computerised tiles which are aware of their relationship to the world, to the user and to other siftables. They can be used for learning, for digital storytelling and for making music. Amazing – and you heard it here (well on TED) first.

A great little free online tool for creating online jigsaws from your own digital images. Ideal for using with interactive whiteboards or tablet PCs.

http://www.jigsawplanet.com

One for the land-based colleges here (and probably for the rest of us). Farmland is web-based interactive game sponsored by the European Union which challenges players to confront the problems and issues of running a mixed farm online, and to run it ethically. A painless way of exploring a possibly painful issue?

Put on your virtual wellies, click here and find out.

Date: 29th October
Venue: University of Stirling
Cost: £50 (inlcuding entry to Pre-Conference workshops)

There are a few places left at Virtual Worlds 2008, a conference organised by the two Scottish RSCs, in partnership with the Higher Education Academy and with financial support from Eduserv. Hosted by the University of Stirling, this is your last chance to sign up to one of this year’s most exciting events!

This is the first time that Scotland has hosted an event on such a scale dedicated to exploring the educational value of virtual worlds.  We’ve managed to bring together examples from all across the country of how lecturers are using the technology to stimulate, engage and most importantly, educate their students. You’ll not only have the opportunity to meet with the lecturers, but also to experience virtual worlds for yourself as your led through the learning sequences in one of the many hands-on workshops on offer.

Download the conference programme here (PDF, 69KB)

With so many parallel sessions running, it’s likely that you won’t be able to go along to every workshop/presentation that you want to attend, so we’ve set aside some time in the day so that you can meet with presenters and colleagues to discuss how your students can benefit from the technology on offer.

The conference schedule is as follows:

09:30 Registration (with breakfast served from 9am)
10:00 Introduction – Sarah Price, JISC RSC Scotland North & East
10:10 Keynote 1: Virtual Worlds in Education, Andy Powell, Eduserve
10:45 AM Parallel sessions
12:15 Lunch
13:15 Meet the presenters (with refreshments)
13:45 Keynote 2: Implementing Virtual Worlds, Pauline Randall, Virtual-e
14:20 PM Parallel sessions
15:50 Closing – Fionnuala Carmichael, JISC RSC Scotland South & West
16:00 End

Remember to turn up early if you want to grab a quick breakfast!

Some of the hands-on sessions require a level of competance with Second Life or its open source equivalent, OpenSim. For those new to the platforms, or those who want to brush up on their virtual skills,  we’ve organised a series of Pre-Conference workshops that will be running around the country in the two weeks before the event. There’s no additional charge to attend any of these workshops.

15th – Aberdeen College, 13:00-16:00
20th – North Highland College, 13:00-16:00
21st – RSC Scot S&W (Glasgow), 09:30-12:30 & 13:30-16:30
22nd – Carnegie College, 13:00-16:00
23rd – Angus College, 10:00-13:00
24th – University of Edinburgh, 09:30-12:30

There are only a few places left at the conference, so if you don’t want to miss the chance to see what Virtual Worlds can offer you and your students, book your place now!

Click here to book a place at Virtual Worlds 2008!

A pioneering study into the benefit of using computer games to improve learning has found they can boost maths attainment. Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS), the main organisation for the development of the curriculum and for exploring the use of ICT in Scottish Schools, carried out an analysis of the effect of Nintendo’s Brain Training from Dr Kawashima on pupils’ maths ability.

It found a daily dose of the computer game improved pupils’ attainment in maths and their concentration and behaviour levels. The findings, revealed at the Scottish Learning Festival in late September were based on research involving more than 600 pupils in 32 schools across Scotland. Click here for further information.

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If the price of a ticket to Beijing is out of reach in these credit crunch days then there is another way of visiting the forbidden city. IBM, working with China’s Palace Museum, have created an exact replica of the Forbidden City’s 178 acres. Three years of work have gone into a meticulous recreation of every building and thousands of major artefacts and the whole thing can be downloaded at no cost. Once inside the simulation you can choose an avatar which you then dress in the appropriate period clothing to set out to explore. Is this the shape of tourism to come? Click here to download the virtual forbidden city (be wary that the download file is very large).